fic: make me a willow cabin at your gate (bel/marnie)
make me a willow cabin at your gate.
the hour. bel rowley/marnie madden. two women who no longer have anything to fight about. Marnie seems more adult now--she still speaks in that silly, posh, almost childish way but there is a kind of gravity to her that Bel only saw on occasion before.
notes: yet again, here i am on my femmeslash brigade of one. i sort of ship this like burning even if hardly anyone else does, so of course, i wrote fic.
Bel disconnects from the whole thing, really. She has the story to worry about, and Freddie and the worrying pays off, sort of, because Freddie becomes famous, a kind of populist hero and her name is mentioned sometimes, afterward. She can be known too, she knows it, but she will have to break at least five more political scandals first
So it goes.
She does not read the society papers, is proud enough of never having worked for them but it flips open to a picture of Marnie, smile stiff the way it can only ever be on paper and she stops. Divorce, it says, just divorce. Marnie, she supposes, is important enough to be spared further detail.
That's the thing about money--Marnie will always have dignity.
It is 1961 when they run into one another again and Marnie is wearing trousers.
This is a surprise, really, more than anything else--they are in a shop and Marnie's hair is pulled back, as ever, and she looks the same, with slight alterations in style but Bel laughs because that one detail is incongruous enough on its own, Marnie in trousers.
It is Marnie who comes over, of course, throwing herself into Bel's path regardless of circumstances (is it manners, she used to wonder, a kind of masochism?).
“Miss Rowley!" The smile is bright as ever, splitting Marnie's face in that way that makes her look like a child. "Or is it Miss Rowley?"
”Miss Rowley.” Bel flashes a short smile.
"I would never have thought to run into you again.”
”It's good to see you, Marnie," she says and it is a lie, yes, but all the same, seeing her is different than it used to be.
Marnie has always pushed them into an intimacy beyond what Bel would have expected and she is not sure, even now, the purpose of it--the ways of a certain class, perhaps, or just the ways of women. She has forgotten how women behave to each other, women who are not her or Lix, women who are not purposeful exceptions to a rule that isn't really true anyway.
Marnie asks her to lunch and Bel has never been good at saying no to things like this
Marnie's movements are similar, but looser, less of the wound up clock that Bel remembers in 1956 (Bel herself, she thinks, is even more of the same, a pent up big cat in a London studio). She smokes at the table, tips her head back, laughs as loudly as she ever did.
"I take it you've heard about Hector and me, then."
"Yes," says Bel, who does not see the point in lying.
"He didn't leave me. If that's what you're thinking. Or--it wasn't that way."
"I wasn't thinking that."
"I hope you'll forgive me if I'm being overly intimate but I only--we've had some very serious conversations before, haven't we, Miss Rowley?"
"Yes."
Marnie blows out some smoke.
"You musn't pity me."
"I don't."
"I did want to be your friend, you know. Back then. I must have thought you were--god, more sophisticated than anyone I'd met, in your way. You were nothing like how I thought people should be and yet--I regretted so not having been you."
"Marnie--"
"It wasn't some sort of ploy. Being your friend. I knew you didn't--like me, of course. I must have seemed very silly, back then. It's not as though I couldn't see you and Mr. Lyon smirking behind your hands--"
"You never seemed silly," Bel says, and means it.
"God, I must have embarrassed myself terribly, haven't I?"
The smile flashes up again, bright and young and she calls the waiter over.
-
She remembers that night at the estate, dancing with Marnie and how the men had removed themselves and she had thought of Mary Shelley who was not allowed to go on hunting trips with Shelley and Byron and Marnie had placed her gloved hands in Bel's bare ones and said, you'll have to be my gentleman and they had danced, Marnie's dark loose glorious head tipped back as Bel twirled her around and it isn't just the money, she had thought, it can't be, or if it is, he's a fool.
-
Discussions like the one they have at lunch always either end a friendship or start it and this turns out, surprisingly enough, to be the latter.
Marnie seems more adult now--she still speaks in that silly, posh, almost childish way but there is a kind of gravity to her that Bel only saw on occasion before and later, when she sees Jacqueline Kennedy behind her husband's coffin, she thinks of dark hair and soft voices and hard eyes (she is not sure what to do with Marnie, she is never sure what to do with Marnie).
"I've never had a friend who was a woman before," Marnie says, propped on the edge of Bel's couch. Marnie is unaccustomed to Bel's tradition of friendship (phone calls and long hours at each other's houses, threading around life as usual as opposed to set out spaces--lunches and bridge clubs) but she has adapted well.. "Not when I was grown, anyway."
"What about all your lunch ladies?"
Marnie waves a hand. Her shoes are off, her knees curled to her chest.
"Not really."
"Well, if it helps, I don't think I have either." Bel shrugs. "But then I work with all those men."
"To women." Marnie raises her glass. "I meant it, you know, when I said Hector didn't leave me. Or--he did. But it wasn't that way. I didn't try to stop him."
"Oh."
"There was a man, you see," Marnie says the words carefully, "A journalist. Mr. Lyon's replacement, actually. And he was young and he liked me and I was so angry, you see? Angry over everyone but especially over you. And I suppose Hector couldn't forgive it, really. Or I didn't let him forgive it. Funny, how different it is--when it's the other person. When it's the wife."
"I've always hated that." Bel laughs, low, short.
"In any case, I rushed out. A ruined woman. Or I would have liked to be--Daddy didn't allow that. The papers just printed divorce and people assumed--he'd finally gotten bored of me."
"Marnie," Bel says, "Hector was a fool. A damned fool."
"I know."
"No. Hector was a fool."
-
They have gone out drinking, after a long evening and it is Marnie who kisses her, her quick red eager lips pressing against Bel's and she is too drunk and surprised and not surprised to do anything for a moment but Marnie has her hands in Bel's hair, kissing her more and it is not something it has occurred to Bel to want but it is so easy, this is so easy, maybe easier than it has been with anyone else and when Marnie pulls back, she does not look at her.
"So this is your way, Mrs. Madden?"
"Oh, god, I--please--"
"Don't worry about it," says Bel, and kisses her again.
-
Neither of them have been with a woman before and it is clumsy at first, separating each other's bodies from their own and making each other into mirror versions of themselves (Marnie's quick clever fingers) and it is worse than it ever was with her husband, Bel thinks, it is more complex.
-
Freddie still calls, sometimes. It is not nearly as frequent as she would have expected.
They go to dinner. He is seeing a woman, he says.
"I'm glad," Bel says.
"And you?"
Bel gives her same smile as ever and lets him imagine a lawyer or perhaps another banker.
-
"Daddy doesn't like me living on my own," says Marnie (after all these years, she still says Daddy in the exact same way), "he wants me to get another husband."
"And do you want one?"
Marnie shrugs.
"Not like Hector."
Bel kisses her lips and realizes she has no idea how this will end (she doesn't mind).
the hour. bel rowley/marnie madden. two women who no longer have anything to fight about. Marnie seems more adult now--she still speaks in that silly, posh, almost childish way but there is a kind of gravity to her that Bel only saw on occasion before.
notes: yet again, here i am on my femmeslash brigade of one. i sort of ship this like burning even if hardly anyone else does, so of course, i wrote fic.
Bel disconnects from the whole thing, really. She has the story to worry about, and Freddie and the worrying pays off, sort of, because Freddie becomes famous, a kind of populist hero and her name is mentioned sometimes, afterward. She can be known too, she knows it, but she will have to break at least five more political scandals first
So it goes.
She does not read the society papers, is proud enough of never having worked for them but it flips open to a picture of Marnie, smile stiff the way it can only ever be on paper and she stops. Divorce, it says, just divorce. Marnie, she supposes, is important enough to be spared further detail.
That's the thing about money--Marnie will always have dignity.
It is 1961 when they run into one another again and Marnie is wearing trousers.
This is a surprise, really, more than anything else--they are in a shop and Marnie's hair is pulled back, as ever, and she looks the same, with slight alterations in style but Bel laughs because that one detail is incongruous enough on its own, Marnie in trousers.
It is Marnie who comes over, of course, throwing herself into Bel's path regardless of circumstances (is it manners, she used to wonder, a kind of masochism?).
“Miss Rowley!" The smile is bright as ever, splitting Marnie's face in that way that makes her look like a child. "Or is it Miss Rowley?"
”Miss Rowley.” Bel flashes a short smile.
"I would never have thought to run into you again.”
”It's good to see you, Marnie," she says and it is a lie, yes, but all the same, seeing her is different than it used to be.
Marnie has always pushed them into an intimacy beyond what Bel would have expected and she is not sure, even now, the purpose of it--the ways of a certain class, perhaps, or just the ways of women. She has forgotten how women behave to each other, women who are not her or Lix, women who are not purposeful exceptions to a rule that isn't really true anyway.
Marnie asks her to lunch and Bel has never been good at saying no to things like this
Marnie's movements are similar, but looser, less of the wound up clock that Bel remembers in 1956 (Bel herself, she thinks, is even more of the same, a pent up big cat in a London studio). She smokes at the table, tips her head back, laughs as loudly as she ever did.
"I take it you've heard about Hector and me, then."
"Yes," says Bel, who does not see the point in lying.
"He didn't leave me. If that's what you're thinking. Or--it wasn't that way."
"I wasn't thinking that."
"I hope you'll forgive me if I'm being overly intimate but I only--we've had some very serious conversations before, haven't we, Miss Rowley?"
"Yes."
Marnie blows out some smoke.
"You musn't pity me."
"I don't."
"I did want to be your friend, you know. Back then. I must have thought you were--god, more sophisticated than anyone I'd met, in your way. You were nothing like how I thought people should be and yet--I regretted so not having been you."
"Marnie--"
"It wasn't some sort of ploy. Being your friend. I knew you didn't--like me, of course. I must have seemed very silly, back then. It's not as though I couldn't see you and Mr. Lyon smirking behind your hands--"
"You never seemed silly," Bel says, and means it.
"God, I must have embarrassed myself terribly, haven't I?"
The smile flashes up again, bright and young and she calls the waiter over.
-
She remembers that night at the estate, dancing with Marnie and how the men had removed themselves and she had thought of Mary Shelley who was not allowed to go on hunting trips with Shelley and Byron and Marnie had placed her gloved hands in Bel's bare ones and said, you'll have to be my gentleman and they had danced, Marnie's dark loose glorious head tipped back as Bel twirled her around and it isn't just the money, she had thought, it can't be, or if it is, he's a fool.
-
Discussions like the one they have at lunch always either end a friendship or start it and this turns out, surprisingly enough, to be the latter.
Marnie seems more adult now--she still speaks in that silly, posh, almost childish way but there is a kind of gravity to her that Bel only saw on occasion before and later, when she sees Jacqueline Kennedy behind her husband's coffin, she thinks of dark hair and soft voices and hard eyes (she is not sure what to do with Marnie, she is never sure what to do with Marnie).
"I've never had a friend who was a woman before," Marnie says, propped on the edge of Bel's couch. Marnie is unaccustomed to Bel's tradition of friendship (phone calls and long hours at each other's houses, threading around life as usual as opposed to set out spaces--lunches and bridge clubs) but she has adapted well.. "Not when I was grown, anyway."
"What about all your lunch ladies?"
Marnie waves a hand. Her shoes are off, her knees curled to her chest.
"Not really."
"Well, if it helps, I don't think I have either." Bel shrugs. "But then I work with all those men."
"To women." Marnie raises her glass. "I meant it, you know, when I said Hector didn't leave me. Or--he did. But it wasn't that way. I didn't try to stop him."
"Oh."
"There was a man, you see," Marnie says the words carefully, "A journalist. Mr. Lyon's replacement, actually. And he was young and he liked me and I was so angry, you see? Angry over everyone but especially over you. And I suppose Hector couldn't forgive it, really. Or I didn't let him forgive it. Funny, how different it is--when it's the other person. When it's the wife."
"I've always hated that." Bel laughs, low, short.
"In any case, I rushed out. A ruined woman. Or I would have liked to be--Daddy didn't allow that. The papers just printed divorce and people assumed--he'd finally gotten bored of me."
"Marnie," Bel says, "Hector was a fool. A damned fool."
"I know."
"No. Hector was a fool."
-
They have gone out drinking, after a long evening and it is Marnie who kisses her, her quick red eager lips pressing against Bel's and she is too drunk and surprised and not surprised to do anything for a moment but Marnie has her hands in Bel's hair, kissing her more and it is not something it has occurred to Bel to want but it is so easy, this is so easy, maybe easier than it has been with anyone else and when Marnie pulls back, she does not look at her.
"So this is your way, Mrs. Madden?"
"Oh, god, I--please--"
"Don't worry about it," says Bel, and kisses her again.
-
Neither of them have been with a woman before and it is clumsy at first, separating each other's bodies from their own and making each other into mirror versions of themselves (Marnie's quick clever fingers) and it is worse than it ever was with her husband, Bel thinks, it is more complex.
-
Freddie still calls, sometimes. It is not nearly as frequent as she would have expected.
They go to dinner. He is seeing a woman, he says.
"I'm glad," Bel says.
"And you?"
Bel gives her same smile as ever and lets him imagine a lawyer or perhaps another banker.
-
"Daddy doesn't like me living on my own," says Marnie (after all these years, she still says Daddy in the exact same way), "he wants me to get another husband."
"And do you want one?"
Marnie shrugs.
"Not like Hector."
Bel kisses her lips and realizes she has no idea how this will end (she doesn't mind).